Friend,

Getting everyone connected to broadband isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. My friend and coworker Kimberly knows this from personal experience. I thought our colleagues were kidding when they said she “built her internet with her own two hands” ... as you can see from her message below, it turns out that she did.

High-speed internet access completely changed Kimberly’s life and those of her neighbors in her rural community in Western Massachusetts. But she’ll tell you that it feels as though her work is just beginning, especially as federal funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) may dry up soon.

In remote and impoverished communities across America, up to 20 percent of users receive the program’s subsidies. Some towns are trying to see whether state support can bridge the gap until Congress extends the federal program (which is not guaranteed, given recent budgetary bickering).

Other communities plan to use mutual-aid networks to keep ACP subscribers online. If you have a story about how high-speed internet access has impacted your life and your community, we’d love to hear it!

Politicians in Washington need to understand how important this program is. Hearing from people like you is the best way to convince lawmakers to preserve funding for the ACP.

Thanks for sharing,

Heather and the rest of the Free Press Action team

Friend,

It’s been nearly 20 years since a seed of an idea grew into a plan to bring affordable high-speed internet services to my rural community in hilly Western Massachusetts. Verizon, our broadband provider, routinely ignored our remote region, just as it neglected countless other off-the-grid areas across the country. My Plainfield neighbors and I formed a group of local volunteers to bring better-than-dial-up connections to our homes.

In 2008, we caught our first break in the form of $40 million in state funding for rural broadband. It took us another 10 years of organizing and navigating policy shifts before we broke ground. In early 2018, Plainfield began to lay our own fiber network, running lines along 40 miles of rural roads and through local woods to reach 100 percent of town premises.

Our path to connectivity was long but with a lot of hard work and organizing we brought the first customers online by the end of 2019. By 2021, we’d connected 282 active business and residential locations to gigabit-internet services.

In Plainfield, a connection allows people to participate in Local Educational Council meetings, maintain steady employment through remote work and receive top-notch care through telehealth visits. Access to the network ensures our local government can perform its daily functions and reach people in need of assistance. All of this has changed our lives for the better in so many ways.

But my absolute favorite thing happening online? A fast internet connection is necessary for two of my octogenarian neighbors to perform with the critically acclaimed Young@Heart Chorus.

It’s one thing to wire a town as remote as Plainfield. It’s another thing altogether to ensure that everyone here can afford a connection. And we know that like water and electricity, broadband is essential to everyday life in America.

That’s why Plainfielders were so pleased in 2021 when the Biden administration created the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The ACP is already benefiting more than 23 million U.S. families in need, including 18 Plainfield households. While this number may seem small, in our tiny rural community, internet access is life-changing.

Without the ACP — which is on track to run out of funding by April — tens of thousands of households across our rural region could become virtually stranded. The loss of the subsidy could cause a massive disruption to their lives, leaving them to make hard choices about which essentials they’ll be forced to forego.

Thanks for hearing me out, friend! This is my story — and my community’s story — about high-speed internet access.

I’m sure you have stories of your own about what it took to get online and how the internet has changed your life and your community’s life. Would you be so kind as to share those with us?

We’re collecting stories from you, our members, as part of Free Press Action’s fight to ensure the ACP remains fully funded. Hearing from people like you about the importance of an affordable connection will help us convince Washington politicians to keep the ACP afloat. It’s a fight we must win, and we need your help.

Thank you so much,

Kimberly Longey
CFO/COO
Free Press Action
freepress.net

P.S. If you haven’t already, consider signing our petition urging swift passage of the ACP Extension Act, which will fund the program through the rest of 2024.